How this Enterprise Sales Rep multithreaded stakeholders and increased sales velocity

TLDR;

Challenges:

• Managing complex enterprise deals with multiple stakeholders
• Long and drawn-out sales cycles
• Disorganized communication spread across emails, spreadsheets, and CRMs
• Difficult handoffs between sales and onboarding teams, leading to inefficiencies
• Lack of visibility into buyer engagement and interaction with materials
• Challenges in keeping stakeholders aligned throughout the sales process

Solution:

• Centralized deal room to consolidate, organize, and streamlined processes
• Multithreaded stakeholders organically
• Collaborative mutual action plans
• Buyer engagement insights and analytics

Results:

• Increased deal velocity
• Higher account coverage
• Better buying experience
• Cross-departmental collaboration with sales, marketing, enablement, and onboarding

Schedule your personalized demo today.

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The situation

Streamlining communication and ensuring seamless collaboration are critical elements of success for enterprise sales.

For Ikram Ben Aziza, an Enterprise Account Executive at Crobox, effective multithreading became vital in transforming their sales processes. This blog post explores how Ikram and her team utilized Recapped, a deal execution platform, to improve their sales velocity and achieve powerful results.

Crobox, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, offers guided selling solutions to brands and retailers, enhancing their online shopper experiences. Their primary goal is to eliminate friction points during the buying process, providing in-store advice more effectively online.

Their ideal customers are large organizations with multiple departments involved in the buying process. Ikram felt that the sales process was causing unnecessary friction for buyers and lengthening their sales cycles.

‍"I felt like we weren't walking the talk," Ikram said. Their own buyer journey mirrored the very challenges Crobox aimed to solve.

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The challenges

Managing an enterprise deal is no easy task.

"We have to assign the right project managers, talk to the right people, and provide access to documents like drives and sheets," Ikram explains.

The process is never-ending, especially when dealing with extensive client-specific requirements. It can become overwhelming and challenging to ensure everyone stays on the same page.

Key challenges include:

1. Lengthy Deal Cycles: Sales cycles can stretch up to a year, with many events like parental leaves or project hold-ups causing crucial delays.
2. Buyer Friction: Managing numerous documents and maintaining centralized records becomes highly tedious.
3. Stakeholder Misalignment: Ensuring that all stakeholders have the right information and stay aligned was a constant struggle.

These obstacles were not only present before the deal closed but also during the handover to the onboarding team, making a smooth transition difficult:

‍"While we store everything in the CRM, there's still a need for introductions through emails and calls. And then there is a whole additional layer of communication and information thrown into the mix."

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The solution - why Recapped?

Ikram championed Recapped because of the tangible improvements it brought to deal execution, from faster timelines to increased account coverage and buyer engagement. ‍

“Recapped is like our Asana for external stakeholders—it keeps everyone on the same page and makes the process smoother for everyone.”

Recapped is allowing Ikram to offer seamless communication and project management with her clients. This shift helped Ikram eliminate the friction points that plagued her sales process.

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1. Multi-threading stakeholders organically from decision makers to end-users

The amount of stakeholders in a single deal is growing, and gaining consensus can make or break deals.

Before discovering Recapped, Ikram faced significant challenges in ensuring her messages reached the right stakeholders. She often had to rely on multiple channels, asking her point of contact to forward emails or include others in CC, which rarely happened.

Despite using her sales intelligence tool, Ikram never knew for sure who received her messages or if they understood the information.

LinkedIn presented another hurdle, as engaging stakeholders depended on whether her connection requests were accepted. "And this really depends on whether they accept your LinkedIn connection request or not," she noted. Additionally, her email communication involved tagging higher-ups and hoping the information reached them. This approach left her feeling like she was "flying blind," uncertain if her efforts were effective.

Recapped solved this by allowing stakeholders to join the workspace organically, without Ikram needing to constantly follow up.

Ikram recalled an “aha moment” when stakeholders from different continents joined the workspace on their own: “I noticed 3 or 4 more people from different countries joined the workspace, and I hadn’t done anything.”

This organic multithreading expanded the points of contact and ensured the right people were engaged, without relying on manual effort.

Recapped provided a centralized workspace where all stakeholders could access the same materials and track progress in real-time. This made it much easier for Ikram to engage multiple stakeholders, no matter their location.

‍“It was like magic when more people from the company joined the workspace without me even asking"

This organic engagement meant key decision-makers and influencers could easily become part of the conversation without Ikram having to chase them down.

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Key features that drove success:

• Consolidated and Organized Information: The platform provides a clear, digestible structure for all information, ensuring that team members and stakeholders can easily access what they need without combing through numerous files and emails. This reduces friction and keeps the buyer journey smooth and efficient.
• Collaborative Deal Room: The ability to tag stakeholders and leave comments within the Recapped workspace made it easier for everyone to stay connected. “It feels like we’re a team,” Ikram said, explaining how the workspace streamlined communication and made collaboration feel natural.
• Real-Time Buyer Engagement Insights: Recapped’s engagement insights allowed Ikram to see who was viewing and interacting with the workspace, ensuring the right people were staying involved. “I no longer feel like I’m flying blind,” Ikram said, as Recapped’s insights showed exactly who was engaging with which materials and when.

Recapped’s engagement features helped Ikram build stronger relationships with key stakeholders, reduced the need for constant follow-ups, and ensured everyone was on the same page throughout the sales process and buying journey.

This level of transparency and collaboration allowed Ikram to focus more on moving deals forward and less on chasing down contacts.

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2. Managing large enterprise deals effectively

Managing large enterprise deals is a constant struggle for sales reps due to disorganized communication and scattered information.

Ikram needed to engage stakeholders across different departments and regions. 

Once stakeholders were introduced, another challenge with managing large enterprise deals was keeping multiple stakeholders engaged and on the same page. With deals involving numerous departments and stakeholders across different regions, ensuring everyone had access to the right information was a constant struggle.

Using a mix of spreadsheets, emails, and CRM systems led to confusion, misalignment, and slow deal progression. “We tried to centralize everything in an Excel spreadsheet, but it just kept multiplying endlessly,” Ikram explained.

With long sales cycles—sometimes lasting up to a year—keeping everyone on the same page became even more difficult, especially when dealing with staff turnover, parental leaves, or project delays within client organizations.

Recapped provided a centralized, organized workspace where all communication, documents, and updates were consolidated.

Instead of relying on fragmented tools, Ikram and her team could ensure that all stakeholders had access to the same, up-to-date information in real-time.

‍“Everything is structured in a way that is clear, digestible, and easy to share across the organization"

Key features that drove success:

• Centralized Deal Room: The unified deal room replaced the scattered spreadsheets and email chains, ensuring that everyone had a single source of truth for all deal-related information. This helped avoid confusion and kept everyone unified.
• Real-Time Updates: Notifications and access controls made sure that the right people had access to the right materials when they needed them. This reduced the need for constant follow-ups and prevented delays caused by missing information.
• Buyer Engagement Insights: Recapped offered full visibility into who was accessing documents and engaging with the materials, giving Ikram confidence that all key stakeholders were staying informed.

By eliminating disorganized communication and offering a streamlined, centralized workspace, Recapped helped Ikram overcome the complexities of managing large enterprise deals.

This improved alignment across all teams and stakeholders, enabling smoother and more efficient deal progression.

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3. Streamlining the customer journey from sales to onboarding

Ikram often faced challenges with long, complex sales cycles, where misalignment between teams and inefficient handoffs to onboarding caused significant delays.

With multiple stakeholders and extensive back-and-forth communication, ensuring that everyone was on the same page became difficult, leading to missed details and slow deal progression.

Recapped structured the entire buyer’s journey, ensuring that every interaction, document, and next step was clearly tracked in the shared deal room. This allowed both the sales and post-sales teams to stay up-to-date, preventing critical information from slipping through the cracks.

‍“The best part is that even the post-sales team can use the same space, so there’s no friction in the transition"

Key features that drove success:

• Shared Digital Sales Room: Recapped provided a single, centralized deal room that both sales and post-sales teams could access, ensuring a smooth handoff and preventing information loss.
• Mutual Action Plan: Also known as Mutual Success Plan, Joint Engagement Plan. These action plans give  all stakeholders visibility and help hold everyone accountable to next steps, keeping timelines on track to achieve their goals.
  A common misconception is that MAPs end when the contract is signed. They do not! They can be used through onboarding and implementation and even for renewals, and more.
• HubSpot Integration: Recapped integrated seamlessly with HubSpot, syncing all deal data and ensuring everything was up-to-date without the need for manual data entry. “We don’t have to enter information twice,” Ikram mentioned, which helped avoid duplicating efforts and ensured accuracy.

By using Recapped, Ikram’s team was able to get everybody on the same page more effectively throughout the sales and onboarding process, reducing delays and improving overall deal execution.

This seamless structure helped ensure that every deal progressed smoothly from start to finish, without unnecessary confusion or miscommunication.

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Cross-departmental use cases for Recapped

Beyond sales, Ikram discovered that Recapped provided value across multiple functions at Crobox, improving efficiency in other critical areas like marketing, onboarding, and internal sales training.

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Sales to marketing alignment

Recapped provided actionable insights that allowed Crobox’s marketing team to create more targeted campaigns.

‍“I can see what materials resonate the most with prospects, and then I share that with marketing,” Ikram said.

By analyzing which content was being viewed and downloaded most frequently, Ikram could give feedback to the marketing team, helping them create content that better fit with buyer interests.

‍“It would be nice to create a piece of content based on what’s getting the most engagement,” she added, illustrating how Recapped insights influenced marketing strategy.

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Sales handoff to customer success for onboarding and implementation

The handoff between sales and onboarding had been a challenging process before Recapped, but now the post-sales team could access the same collaborative workspace.

‍“The information is structured in a way that’s clear and easy to share, so the onboarding team can jump in without missing anything,” Ikram explained.

This reduced the friction during the transition and allowed the onboarding team to get new clients up and running much faster.

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Sales enablement and training for new hires

Recapped was also valuable for onboarding new sales reps. By giving them access to past deal workspaces, new hires could quickly learn how deals were structured, what prospects focused on, and how Crobox solves specific problems.

‍“Recapped shows them how we structure information, so they get a practical view of how we handle deals,” Ikram noted, making it an essential tool for training and enabling the sales team.

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Adapting various Sales Methodologies and frameworks

Crobox employs a hybrid approach to sales methodologies, drawing on elements from MEDDICC and Sandler with Winning by Design’s SPICED™️ Framework as the foundation.

Recapped’s customizable templates allowed Ikram to tailor the deal rooms to Crobox’s specific methods ensuring that every deal followed a clear process from start to finish.

“What I like about Recapped is it really has templates that cater to either or all these methods, and you get to customize your own as well,” Ikram affirms.

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The results

Implementing Recapped brought significant improvements to Ikram’s sales process at Crobox, resulting in faster deal closures, broader account coverage, and an overall better buyer experience.

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🎯 Increased deal velocity

One of the most notable outcomes was the acceleration of deal cycles. By using Recapped to address bottlenecks early—particularly around security concerns—Ikram’s team could push deals forward more quickly.

‍“We even have a section about security and technical information, and we get the right people involved from the start,” Ikram explained.

This allowed them to overcome roadblocks faster, shortening the time it took to close deals.

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🎯 Improved account coverage

With Recapped, Ikram saw a significant increase in stakeholder engagement. Before, deals often involved one or two key contacts, but with Recapped’s organic multithreading, the number of involved stakeholders grew.

‍“The minimum number of people I have for an account now is 4. And in one workspace, I’ve had up to 15 people,” Ikram said.

This broad coverage ensures that multiple stakeholders are engaged, from decision makers to end users.

“The account coverage really improved from just 1-2 people to 7-8 people on average.”

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🎯 Better buying experience

Feedback from Crobox’s clients also reflected the improvements Recapped brought to their experience. Buyers found the centralized workspace easy to use and appreciated the transparency it offered.

A champion even shared that Recapped made it easier to put presentations together because all the materials were in one place.

‍“He knows exactly where to go and what to download,” Ikram noted.

The improved communication and streamlined access to materials helped foster stronger relationships between Ikram and her clients.

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Recommended best practices for sales

Throughout her experience in enterprise sales, Ikram identified several best practices that were essential to maximizing the platform’s value. These lessons not only improved how Crobox used Recapped but also helped them strengthen their buyer-centric approach.

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Consistency in communication

Ikram emphasized the importance of consistent communication within the Recapped workspace.

By ensuring that all interactions, documents, and next steps were logged in one place, everyone involved stayed on the same page.

‍“You need to be consistent in communicating with your clients through Recapped,” Ikram explained.

This consistency eliminated the need for scattered email threads and helped maintain alignment between teams and stakeholders.

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Setting clear expectations with clients

Ikram found that setting expectations early was key to ensuring clients adopted Recapped smoothly. Some clients were initially hesitant to use a new platform, but guiding them through the workspace and showing its benefits early on made a big difference.

‍“Not everyone is comfortable with a platform like this right away,” Ikram noted, “but it’s important to set expectations from the start and guide them back to the workspace.”

By showing clients how Recapped would streamline communication, Ikram was able to increase adoption and improve collaboration.

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Maintaining a buyer-centric approach

Ikram highlighted the importance of keeping the buyer’s needs front and center throughout the sales process.

Rather than overwhelming clients with product decks or sales pitches, she focused on tailoring content in Recapped to support the buyer’s decision-making journey.

‍“It’s not about our timeline, it’s about theirs,” Ikram said, emphasizing that the buyer’s internal needs and timeline should guide the process.

By using Recapped to deliver the right content at the right time, Ikram ensured that the focus stayed on helping buyers move forward in their own decision-making.

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Recapping it all

Recapped has proven to be an invaluable tool for Ikram Ben Aziza and the entire team at Crobox.

By streamlining communication, improving account coverage, and providing actionable insights, Recapped has significantly enhanced their sales process. The ability to address potential friction points early on and maintain seamless transitions has led to faster deal closures and higher client satisfaction.

For sales reps and account managers dealing with complex, multi-departmental sales processes, Recapped offers a solution that ensures everyone stays on the same page, thereby improving overall efficiency and effectiveness.

As Ikram put it, "Recapped is a powerful tool, and it has proven its value."

If you’re looking to enhance your sales process, streamline communication, and increase sales velocity, consider implementing Recapped in your workflow.

‍Request your personalized demo today!

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Are you the perfect client for Crobox?

The Recapped team knows you'll be in great hands with Crobox.

Crobox’s guided selling solution helps brands and retailers create a seamless online shopping experience by bringing in-store advice to the website. By providing tailored recommendations based on customers’ specific needs, Crobox ensures a satisfying shopping experience that drives higher conversion rates and average order values.

Recapped streamlines the collaboration process after your initial discovery call. By efficiently assigning project managers, connecting with the right people, and providing access to necessary documents, Recapped simplifies the process of creating your desired guided selling solution with your Crobox professional.

If you’re a brand or retailer, we highly recommend Crobox for your guided selling needs!

Ikram Ben Aziza’s contact info:

• Ikram's LinkedIn‍
• Email: ikram@crobox.com
• Crobox's website